Meet the cast and co-writers for "Fly," which is being performed Jan. 26-Feb. 11, 2018, at Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery. "Fly" is the story of four black pilots as they overcome adversity to join the Tuskegee Airmen.
Shannon Heupel/Advertiser

The Alabama Shakespeare Festival production of “Fly,” like the Tuskegee Airmen the play honors, faces major obstacles but fulfills its mission, creating a touching tribute to the men who battled both the Nazis and racism at home.

Director Ricardo Khan, who with Trey Ellis wrote the play, has placed these historic African-American fighter pilots in an unorthodox vehicle. “Fly” is a strange amalgamation of extremely conventional storytelling and experimental theater.

The play’s predictable plot structure could have been taken from a war movie from the 1940s. We meet four recruits, each of whom come from a different part of the country and each with different motivation.

Chet (Clinton Roane) is from New York and has joined because he loves the freedom of flying. J. Allen (Edwin Brown III) is a former British West Indies constable who is flying because it is his duty. Oscar (James Holloway), is from Iowa and has chosen to become a fighter pilot to advance the cause of blacks everywhere. W.W. (Robert Karma Robinson), a lady’s man from Chicago is doing it to impress women.

Chet (Clinton Roane) is from New York and has joined because he loves the freedom of flying.(Photo: Alabama Shakespeare Festiva)

The disparate backgrounds and goals lead to backbiting and conflict. But while being trained by a white racist officer (Christopher Kann) who hopes as many black pilots will flunk out as possible, the four bond, learning to depend on each other. It is a story painted with a broad brush and little subtlety. Each character is a type and remains exactly what they seem.

But if the plot seems dated, it’s also effective. The characters give fine performances, especially Robinson and Roane, drawing us ever deeper into their situation so that by the time they are escorting bombing runs over Europe, we are silently praying they make it.

Although Khan relies on a conventional plot, he melds it with radically unconventional storytelling, much of which is in the form of dance. The Tap Griot (Omar Edwards) is the sort of tap-dancing spiritual guide of the play, who appears, interprets emotional scenes in tap, then disappears. At times in the play, the flow of action halts so cast members can poetically relate their new experiences.

Some of these interludes simply don’t work. When cast members suddenly launch into a step routine it seems awkwardly out of place and artificial, and this is time that probably would have been better used developing some of these characters.

But when it works, it is powerful. Both through his physicality and through his incredible tap technique, Edwards adds additional emotional depth to many of his scenes.

Khan uses sets and props that manage to be simultaneously hi-tech and simplistically minimalistic. For instance, the flight battles are depicted using five video panels surrounding the stage showing aerial scenes, while the airmen sit on simple chairs as their airplanes and use body language to convey flight. The result is surprisingly effective.

Perhaps the best scene is a simple one that uses humor to emotionally convey basic truths of what the Tuskegee Airmen accomplished. A white bomber crew (Casey Predovic and Drew Ledbetter) meets with the black airmen who have been protecting them. W.W. shows them his Voodoo-style burning-his-fears ritual, which soon the white airmen are imitating. It’s a funny scene, but an important one, showing how the bravery of these black pilots has changed the perceptions of the white pilots they protected and fought beside. The examples these pilots set forced many other white Americans to do the same.

By the play’s conclusion, as Chet, now an old man, is being interviewed at Obama’s inauguration and the five video screens are showing photos of the actual Tuskegee Airmen, there is no one in the audience who won’t appreciate the Tuskegee Airmen’s sacrifice and the enormity of what they accomplished.

One can discuss the play’s odd structure, but somehow Khan has taken this combination of traditional plot and modernistic theater and molded it into a touching and inspiring homage to not only heroes of World War II but of civil rights.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: Alabama Shakespeare Festival’s production of “Fly”

WHERE: ASF’s Festival Stage

WHEN: Through Feb. 11

COST: Tickets start at $30; available at ASF.net, 800-841-4273 and at the ASF box office.

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The cast of "Fly," from left, Rob Karma Robinson as W.W., James Holloway as Oscar, Clinton Roane as Chet Simpkins, and Edwin Brown III as J. Allen, and Omar Edwards as The Tap Griot in rear, rehearses at Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery on Jan. 16, 2018. "Fly" performances will run from Jan. 26-Feb. 11.
Shannon Heupel/Advertiser

The cast of "Fly," from left, Clinton Roane as Chet Simpkins, James Holloway as Oscar, Edwin Brown III as J. Allen, and Rob Karma Robinson as W.W., and Omar Edwards as The Tap Griot in rear, rehearses at Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery on Jan. 16, 2018. "Fly" performances will run from Jan. 26-Feb. 11.
Shannon Heupel/Advertiser

Clinton Roane as Chet Simpkins in the cast of "Fly" rehearses at Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery on Jan. 16, 2018. "Fly" performances will run from Jan. 26-Feb. 11.
Shannon Heupel/Advertiser